Fernweh

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Fernweh - a German word referring to the feeling of homesickness for a place you have never been to.

How does one feel homesick for a place they have never been to? It could be that they've spent a considerable amount of time second-handedly experiencing the place through pictures, narratives etc...and start to build a personal sanctum inside fashioned in the likeness of that place to retreat to when times get tough. When that place becomes increasingly ingrained in your consciousness, you begin to long for it in reality as well. To actually be there, to experience it with your own senses, and to most importantly assure yourself that dreams and reality aren't that separate after all. After a while, longing becomes a sort of desperation as if you're struggling for air. You start to absorb pictures and other materials almost feverishly as attempts to stave off the desire to reach that place. And in the process, it mistakenly becomes home since going to that place seems more like returning to it, more like giving yourself relief.

My personal sanctum is not a single place, but a world all to myself. A world sewn together with different places that I would travel to easily.

In one place, I walk a golden yellow-carpeted wide road between rows of trees with light filtering through the autumn leaves alone almost like the one above in Showa Kinen Koen. At the end of the road would be a little wooden lodgehouse with a cosy fireplace, wooden shelves filled with books, a tidy  kitchen and pantry with fresh groceries, a cupboard with a collection of all sorts of tea in neat little jars, fresh flowers in a vase on a side table, blue curtains flapping in the wind...

In another, I'm walking along green mountain ridges overlooking a vast ocean with azure skies overhead. I'll sit at the edge and watch the horizon where the waters stretch endlessly towards as I feel the breeze on my face. This looks like Matengai in Shimane, and like Gran Pulse in FFXIII!

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And in yet another place in this world, I'll be treading through snow piling as high as above my ankles, watching as my breath forms cloudy wisps as I exhale. The world here would be pristine white all over and the skies would be a clear blue. I'll walk on and on alone, drinking in the quiet yet majestic view around me. Then it would start to snow and I'd stop and stare at the white bits floating down for a while, before slowly making my way back to my little wooden house where I'll sit near the window with a cup of hot tea and a book, keeping warm by the cosy fireplace.

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This is how part of my sanctum would look like, if I could create it in reality. A world where I am the only person enjoying the beauty of nature exclusively. It won't be mine, still, but it doesn't belong to anybody else too.

However in reality, home is still where your loved ones are, beyond just places and locations.

Idle Minds

Echoes rent the air sharply with every step I took as I approached the corridor. I stopped. Before me were numerous identical doors - I had to pass through one of them.

But which? I may not be able to retreat immediately, should I enter the wrong one. With every passing second, the doors seemed to blend and merge into a continuous wall.

There is no time, choose. I could feel someone's gaze on my back, but tempted as I was, I do not turn.

I willed my feet to move again, towards the door my instincts singled out. Reaching out, I place my trembling palms on its wooden surface, and inhaled deeply with shaking breath.

This is it. I could hear throbbing in my ears from the palpitations of my heart. The door gave an extended creak as it revealed a glimpse of what was lying in wait for me, and I took a step forward.

There it was - unmoving, filling up almost half of the space.

I sighed with relief and smiled. This cubicle is clean. :)


Haha it's post semester 1! And now that all the projects and exams are over, I've quite a bit of time to just slack and waste my life away...for this month, that is.

When my mind is not fixated on a task, or worrying about the pains of reality like work performance, future plans, etc.,  it tends to wander into escapades in my imagination, or come up with trash such as the brief passage you just read above. And it isn't too difficult, or doesn't take much for my mind to do all that - most of my thoughts and ideas are stimulated by what my senses pick from around me.

For example, I was in the public toilet at Jems yesterday and became conscious of the actions and mind process that would probably be experienced by a female (I'm sorry to say I'm not well-versed in the affairs of the opposite gender) when she pays a timely visit to the loo. If the toilet is not crowded, females have the leisure of going through and picking the cubicle she fancies most to rest her derriere on. However the real horror comes when there is a line in the toilet and you're waiting for your turn. As you wait, you try to guess which cubicle fate assigns you to, and perhaps you cross your fingers hoping the person before you using the same cubicle doesn't leave behind some bizarre artwork as a warped gesture of welcome, or parting gift...whichever you interpret it to be. On the other hand, the relief from "getting" a cubicle that is clean while seemingly insignificant is one of the best things that could happen to make your day. (Okay I may have exaggerated a little.) Hence, inspired by the public toilet at Jems yesterday, I wrote the passage above!

Idle minds are the devil's workshop. I wonder if this constitutes being idle in the mind.

Fleeting, Flickering

How often does an average human think about death?

To wonder about when and how it will come, inevitably. To ponder about whether things like souls, heaven, hell or reincarnation exist. To worry about whether in your absence would the world be any different, even in the slightest. And finally, to realise how very much alive we are in the present, and many other discoveries that would haunt you for a long time before life pulls you back into its distracting frenzy and makes you forget about how very insignificant and temporary our existence is in this grand scheme of the universe and time.

These past three days as I sat among tables of relatives both close and distant watching my cousins perform funeral rituals at my uncle's funeral, I've been thinking about death. One of the first things I do after arriving at a funeral is to go and spend a few minutes looking at the deceased lying in his coffin. It's a little difficult for many to approach the coffin and look down into that glass window upon the face of someone whom they've seen moving around, talking, breathing and being very much alive. As you gaze upon his face, you start to think about how he'd never open those eyes again, and become conscious of his absence from this world, from now on. And then you find that there's this queer lump forming in your throat, because the reality that he has already departed and can no longer be in contact in any way possible starts to sink in rather painfully.

I watched as the faces of family members, nephews, nieces, grandchildren become contorted with grief, and become overwhelmed with sorrow and loss. The face that affected me most of all was my grandmother. For which mother would want to see her own son depart before she does? To see her own flesh and blood grow from a crying infant into a fully grown man with his own family until his shrivelled, sickly state on his deathbed?

Death is a subject that chills me to the core. It seems so final, and relentless. It feels like a great, heavy door that shuts tightly between those left behind on this world and those who have departed. It's even more unsettling that no one knows or even has a vague clue about what is beyond that door - we only have our assumptions. Some day too, my turn would come where my life would be extinguished quietly, and all that would be left is nothing more but a shell.